Comparing the Terms Transnational and Globalization - Research Paper Example

In the articles exploring the origins of economic globalization, the claims of world historians are tested and refuted that globalization started in 1571, according to them, globalization was only enabled by 19th-century technological revolutions which facilitated the movement of bulk commodities across continents much more cheaply than the domestic resource allocation and prices were affected by the international trade, can sign the emergence of the global economy. Regarding the mentioned perspective, it is only the 19th-century transport revolution that signaled the international dispersion of commodity prices which according to them is the only evidence that globalization is taking place. There is a need to revise the chronologies of globalization to successfully compare them with transnational history. This article will compare the terms transnational and globalization and their suitability in historical analysis.

Transnationality

Historians have not endorsed a single definition of the term transnational history. According to Akira Iriye who is a key contributor to transnational history development, transnational history is the study of not only movement but also forces that have cut across national boundaries. Sven Beckert who mainly focuses on 19th century United States has offered essential conspectus that vividly describes transnational history as a whole, while at the same time acknowledging the importance of empires and states as well as paying attention to beliefs, networks, institutions, and processes that transcend the mentioned politically defined spaces. Hence, the idea of the nation within the term transnational history is often perceived as encompassing different kinds of political units other than just nation-states.

In the geopolitical context, transnationality is interpreted as intellectual agenda i.e the history of the international relations of nationalism. Nationalism movements started mostly as transnational history, particularly of the diaspora actors who were forced to live in many cities and countries away from the homeland of their perceived territories of the nation. For instance, the Indian nationalists agitated against Britain in Berlin and San Francisco. On the hand, in Paris, young Turks plotted against the ottoman sultan Abdulhamid 11.

Pan-Islamic actors who were not only forced into exile but also hounded by authoritarian regimes of Ottoman Turkey and Romanov Russia or western colonial governments, stand out as transnational diaspora actors who had greatly hoped for global Muslim awakening mainly against western dominion an aspect they believed would help their cause of national liberation. Consequently, the Egyptian Pan-Islamists firmly opposed the British rule, and the pan-Islamists and Pan-Turkists of Russia on the other hand defied the autocrat tsar and held a meeting in Istanbul, Kabul as well as in medina and mecca holy cities.